the defeatists!

America Embraces Defeatism!

Paul Krugman's latest column: When Consumers Capitulate

the end is nigh!

New Frontiers in Science

"Now -RIGHT NOW!! -- is a great moment in the history of furniture, because “the investigation of furniture behaviour itself and its components under a given load is just beginning”.

John McCain Fucks Little Children.

Ask her, she'll tell you:

Shorter John McCain: Obama, He's a Fucking Nigger:

Trivial pursuit of the prize...or nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of hanging

Paul Krugman's column this morning is right on target with where a lot of Americans are feeling and thinking today. This actually might be a bad thing for the blogosphere -- but a good thing for the country and maybe the world. Probably not, because of the AXE oft-complained view of the attention span of the American people. But, maybe not.

In a way, you can’t blame Mr. McCain for campaigning on trivia — after all, it’s worked in the past. Most notably, President Bush got within hanging-chads-and-butterfly-ballot range of the White House only because much of the news media, rather than focusing on the candidates’ policy proposals, focused on their personas: Mr. Bush was an amiable guy you’d like to have a beer with, Al Gore was a stiff know-it-all, and never mind all that hard stuff about taxes and Social Security. And let’s face it: six weeks ago Mr. McCain’s focus on trivia seemed to be paying off handsomely.

But that was before the prospect of a second Great Depression concentrated the public’s mind.

I was talking to my sister in Michigan yesterday. Blue collar, hard-working family hanging on by their finger-tips. She said something that amazed me -- " Bobby and I have always voted Republcian. We're ashamed..." She said that her sister-in-law isn't talking to her husband, because when she asked what Bob thought about Sarah Palin, he said "She's a Bimbo. McCain's a moron..." Peg's a working mom, through kids through college and getting up at 4AM to go work in a donut shop in southeastern Michigan while Bob is an autoworker, who gets up at 3:30 to leave by 4AM to be in Romulus for the start of the only remaining shift at the factory.  They're the epitome of Reagan Democrats...and, they've had it.  She said something interesting, and telling -- "We don't mind paying taxes for things we believe in -- but, Iraq?"

While we all should have diminished expectations going forward for a while, I find this optimistic. That's about as mainstream American as it gets. When I told her the tale of Joe the Plumber not being licensed and not being able to think about any business making $250K on his income, she just laughed, and to channel Bugs and put words in Peg's mouth, "What a maroon!" Common sense may actually triumph over conventional wisdom. I'm not taking bets, of course, but sheesh, that would be nice. To give Krugman the last word:

Will the nation’s new demand for seriousness last? Maybe not — remember how 9/11 was supposed to end the focus on trivialities? For now, however, voters seem to be focused on real issues. And that’s bad for Mr. McCain and conservatives in general: right now, to paraphrase Rob Corddry, reality has a clear liberal bias.

So, we'll see.

Flow on, Flow on, River of Shit...

Bob Herbert's columns trouble me. And, they trouble me for a good reason -- they remind me of how in so many ways we are not the City on the Hill so much as the slums and warrens and hovels at the bottom. But of the many sayings of Joshua ben Joseph, the one that he often makes me think of is "Whatever you do for the least of these my brothers, you do it to me." So, when Herbert reminds us not of the perils of the middle class but what's happening at the bottom -- the poor, the dispossessed -- we need to frankly listen and pay attention. We can shake it off and say "It's their fault that they are poor, hungry, unemployed, unemployable, disease-ridden, homeless, bankrupt..." but as the poet-twit put it 40 years ago, "Instant Karma is going to get you..."

I've been twisting this problem in my head for a while -- the collapse of the ownership society -- and I frankly had been as guilty as John McCain in not thinking lately or enough about the fate of those who would like to be able to aspire to the middle class, but can't get there from where they are. It's just another part of the whole, and in the United States, since the depression, the poor have been The Other America. However, shit does roll down hill...and you're safe, higher up on the hill, unless you slide down.

Few Americans have noticed, but a tremendous number of hospitals, from Boston to Los Angeles, are in serious, even dire, financial trouble. A survey of 4,500 hospitals by the New York consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal found that more than half were technically insolvent or at risk of insolvency. The current economic downturn, combined with an anticipated surge in patients without health insurance, will only worsen what is already a crisis.

The nation’s financial system was all-but-overwhelmed by the mortgage crisis because none of the nation’s leaders paid serious enough attention to the widespread symptoms of what turned out to be a metastasizing disease. A similar situation exists on a number of important fronts right now: the deteriorating national infrastructure, the woefully inadequate public school system, our self-defeating energy policies, health care. Symptoms of serious trouble are staring us in the face, but no one is mounting an adequate response.

When a new president takes office in January, the temptation will be to delay bold action on these fronts until the overall economic situation improves. That is the kind of mistake (like ignoring the housing and credit bubbles until it was too late or refusing to heed the pre-Katrina warnings in New Orleans) that opens the door to additional crises.

Ultimately, comes the kleptocracy, and chaos. What Herbert points out today, focusing on the health care infrastructure, is that we have an underlying systems problem, not a crisis. The crisis exists because of short-sighted solutions, thirty years of greed, exploitation, and the return of the Robber Barons. He concludes by saying that at no time since World War II have we required a president who can lead on so many fronts.

Ultimately, Ronald Reagan sold snake oil, and George H.W.Bush was right in 1980. Ever since then, we have had a national addiction to...snake oil. Whomever leads going forward has to wean us off snake oil. Yeah, the marginal tax rate needs to go up, probably higher than 39% on income over $250K. Payroll taxes need to go up, in that they need to cover income earned up to $250K. We've been spending like drunken idiots and we need to pay down the debt while at the same time spending money where we need to spend it. Infrastructure, health care, education, basic research (Fruit Flies, I kid you not) and defense. I see a massive jobs program as one possibility.

But, it's easier to call the other guy a Muslim. Kerry's campaign, and Gore's to a similar extent, were about complex solutions to complex problems. "Nuance, and complexity -- fuck, no. We're 'Muricans. Got a problem cuttin' that diamond. Sheetfuck...just get me a bigger fuckin' hammer, Clem."

"Never thought about tomorrow..." We're lost, and I have no confidence that we can find ourselves again. In fact, I'm pretty sure we won't -- that's the reason I'm a defeatist. Jesus isn't the answer; Alan Greenday Greenspan has admitted he's clueless. Joe the Plumber is a fucking idiot. We got lost at some point, and we'll see about tomorrow...

Metaphysically, I expect we're going to end up like Peter Wolf, doing what looks like a wedding in a tent someplace Lost in America. But, Herbert indicates a different fate if we pay attention and take action. Me, I'm willing to give it a try, but I'm having problems seeing how this ultimately works.

I thought Richard Wolfe was incredibly restrained on Countdown...

Thanks to IOZ.
Why did Batshit McMadman choose Sarah Palin? ? Current right wing intelligentsia thought is sexually laden. She seduced McCain...damn you, Delilah! If it weren't for her, we could have Joementum really adding joy to the campaign!

Occam's razor certainly makes sense in this case -- the simplest explanation is usually the best, and most of us are damned confused coming up with a reasonable explanation for this choice. Sex is a good one...of course, I happen to think Cindy is more attractive, but I could escape from big John. Todd would run me down with a snowmobile...Still, given his habit of bouncing airplanes off various unyielding surfaces, McBatshit has a short attention span.

I thought Richard Wolfe was incredibly restrained about her comments on special needs kids. He refrained from sputtering, and avoided calling her an insensitive, ignorant cunt-demagogue bitch. He must be in league with Shakespeare's sistern...We're gonna help them, dagoneit, by letting the ignorant idiots that have their water break and then fly back to Alaska from fucking DFW to Juneau or Anchorage or some weasel infected place and have the kid -- we're going to let them decide what's best for their child. And, research -- why spend money on scientific research. Maybe if that preacher prayers over little T and casts out the witchcraft in his life, things will be better.

That ultimately is the Palin program. Import crazed loonie preachers from Kenya and have them cast out the demons. Picture that guy casting devils out of the ATM...

We ain't never gonna change/we ain't doin nothin wrong/ we ain't never gonna change/ so shut your mouth and go along

Or not. One's safer, one's probably more fun.

While I was in Shanghai, one of the teaching assistants asked me if I had ever read Our Town by Thornton Wilder. No, managed to skip that. She was amazed -- I was an educated American, how could I not have read Our Town? Luck, I said, and sly animal cunning. She asked if I would mind reading it over the three weeks so I could discuss it with her. Sure. Our Town doesn't take any three weeks to read in English. If she had handed me a Chinese copy, of course, I'd still be Pu Dong, figuring out the whole mess. Or, probably not. Nothing but Winesburg style prose to get me on a plane. But, she asked, she was lovely and I was there to be the American business expert...so, why I wasn't reading some awful economics tome was sheer luck.

Bloom and his ideas about what we all should read aside, My-Ling had an excellent point from her perspective -- you say you're educated and you haven't read this classic? Well, no. I say I read for knowledge and pleasure, and this doesn't fit any other criteria. Because I was a big reader, I got to skip a lot of tripe that people who weren't big readers had to read. I was reading John Le Carre as freshman in high school while other folks were stuck with The Red Pony. The Red Badge of Courage. The Scarlet Letter... if you read enough awful shit with the color red in the title, you'll never be a communist.

This author puts it in perspective. We learn an alphabet, some phonics and away we go. Character based, tonal languages are far more a pain in the ass for those who are being educated in it. If a dash or a slash is the difference between 'Mao our glorious inspiration" and "Our glorious inspiration is a cat turd," well, you have to get it exactly right or the consequences are daunting.

Forget the harmony guff for a minute, and the philosophy of education for that matter. If you’re learning a character-based, rather than alphabetical language, as you would be in China or Japan, there’s a hell of a lot more rote learning and memorization involved: it’s unavoidable. So are the tests that go with it. And that’s before you get into tone grammars, which require pitch perfect tonal expressions. On top of that, the teaching style is just more authoritarian, as it used to be generally and as it used to be here. None of my teachers would have welcomed a question that raised doubts about their authority over their subject. I suspect none would now, either.

Well, mine did. And, this Tiffany piss in their mouths, is what they got. However, I'm grateful. Yet we all know that there are a lot of folks like this one cited in RBC this morning...A few years ago, a young student complained about the readings in our introduction to American social policy. She wanted to know the right answer, and our syllabus just confused things by including conflicting readings...

One of the reason the young go in for cults is because they want the "certitude" of knowing what is correct...I remember the shock on my Chinese students faces when I encouraged them to practice their English and if they made a mistake, learn from it. Didn't fit -- so from China to the boys from South Alabama...

Let me venture an analogy from biology...

Let me venture an analogy from biology: A patient arrives at a hospital in serious condition. Now, it may be that the patient has simply fallen victim to one of those debilitating ailments that go around from time to time and can be cured by a massive dose of antibiotics. In this case we have a macro problem with a macro solution. But it could instead be that the patient is suffering from a decade of serious abuse—smoking, drinking, overeating, lack of exercise, a fondness for crystal meth—and that it has not only taken a catastrophic toll but also left him open to opportunistic infections of every kind. In other words, a buildup of micro problems has led to a macro problem, and no cure is possible without addressing the underlying issues...

Read it and weep, or learn. If you're due to retire in 40 years, pay attention. If you're due to retire in six months, don't. Continue to pay attention.

Random reflections--Be right, or have your life work

The last time I was this sick, the spouse and the significant other were existentially wrestling over whom it was going to be to put crap up my nose. While I was praying to Tiffany for the blessed release of an OD and sweet death based on equal parts crank and heroin, they were struggling with Qtips covered with Aloe Vera and similar stuff. Naked. In a mud bowl...or, maybe that was the drugs. Cynical C's spouse is using some Haitian potion brewed tealike on him...and, Mrs. AXE, given that she has the field to herself, has taken to brewing tea for me. Is it a women thing -- excuse, wyrd Sisters of Shakesville, wymyn thing -- to pour tea down the throat of suffering men and Qtips of crap up the nose of the sufferers? Momma AXE used to put together a concoction of milky tea with honey and a shot of whiskey. We weren't so well off to have it have been Bushmills, I assume it was something awful like Canadian Beaver Musk, but I can recall the taste.

Is doctrinaire Republican conservatism the new "New Left?" Culture Wars has a piece basically repeating things from Kathleen Parker about what happened to her and to Chris Buckley over Sarah Palin and McCain. Now, the NR crowd never really liked McCain, so if he's all they got going for them at this point, they're fucked anyway. Barry Goldwater supposedly wasn't that high on McCain. Hell, the people who were highest on McCain were anti-government intrusion Democrats back when he had ethics, integrity and benefited from not being George Bush. So, the fact that Parker and Buckley, and Powell, and on and on and on are all opposed to this ticket and the party as presently manifested should cause some thought.

However, the Left consumed itself back in the day. Bill Ayers and Tom Hayden make an interesting contrast here. Hayden married Jane Fonda and has been a semi-mainstream liberal ever since, serving in government and running for elections, trying to change the system from within. Ayers came up with the Weathermen, which morphed into the Weather Underground ( The forecast inside the the salt mine is -- dank, damp and cold? Power to the People) and then discovered that bomb throwing had some problems...he got a PhD and is a professor of Education at a state-funded university.

Hayden and Ayers confronted a simple, existential question --Do you want to be right, or do you want to make your life and ideas work? Effectiveness versus some form of ideological purity? Hayden chose making his life work; Ayers has vacillated. He still wants to be right; he's done some very good things. But, he's still dealing with the idea that a bigger bomb might have done better. Which frankly is absurd...a bigger bomb would have done worse. The average human being is really not that into ideology, or principle, or whatever. They have other things to do. The Chattering Classes, as George Will describes them, on both sides of the spectrum, don't. The Haydens of the world get their hands dirty and their boots dirty and get things changed incrementally. Enough incremental change, and you have something totally different. Viral video, viral social and political change. The Ayers of the world want a big bang theory change...ultimately, like the Weatherperson Underground, they either self-destruct or blow up a men's room. And, talk of the tragedy of the self-destruction (If I hadn't been such a douchebag, I coulda been a contender! Goddamn system) and whimper and moan.

Well, if we look at Will, Buckley, Parker, Noonan, Brooks, Powell et al. as being like Hayden, I think it's safe to see Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Krautheimer et.al as being like Ayers. Ayers calls himself a "small c communist," which is absurd in real life, although semantically possible. I'm not a Christian, I'm a christian; I'm not a Catholic, I'm a catholic; I'm not a Democrat, I'm a democrat. Punctuation is not a part of human speech. Air quotes are absurdities. Speech is actual; punctuation is potential. It is not possible to separate communism from Communism in the understanding of the western world. Call yourself a Marxist or a Hegelian or a Jeffersonian Marxist (I think that would translate at some point into Maoist thought) or a Jacksonian Communist (which would be some sort of paternalistic anarchy at some point) or do something. Ayers has accomplished some things in Chicago and they appear to be good things. He appear to be a decent man today -- but, Hayden can say, "I didn't change, what we were doing didn't work so I did something else) and he can point to accomplishments on a bigger stage. While I prefer the city of Chicago existentially to the entire state of California, a smaller impact in a larger system probably produces more change than a relatively larger impact in a smaller system. Whatever the fuck that means...

Using the George Bush popularity quiz from the 2000 election, whom do you think Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater would rather talk to and work with? Hayden or Ayers? Biden or Palin? Obama or McCain? If Buckley was the intellectual of the conservative movement (hey, whatever happened to Edmund Burke, Aquinas and Plato), Goldwater was the quintessential hands-on, get it done, do the best for the country type of guy. Who could they forge an agreement with? Palin would make Buckley cry, and McCain pissed off Goldwater. Buckley might want to give Biden some rhetoric lessons (Slow down, you Irish clown. You think faster than you can talk, so pause every now and then to let your rhetoric catch up with your mind) but I think they could find a lot of common ground. Obama's JFK style similarity would probably work well with Goldwater, as would the practical approach. Let's remember, that JFK and Goldwater were discussing doing something similar to the McCain proposed townhall meetings for the campaign in 1964.

That would have worked because they could talk to each other. Practical men with different beliefs but a common ground. So, the center-right conservatives and the Democrats have more in common with each other than the center-right conservatives have with the hard right. The hard left has been reduced to bomb-throwers and wannabes in Harvard Square and Berkeley. It's funny, but Barrack Obama might turn out to be Ross Perot. If Perot were black, not crazy and not from Texarkana...

Not particularly clear on the concept either

Ok, I know who Dawkins is; even have the book somewhere here to read at some point. But, an atheism bus just doesn't do it for. An Atheism Ferrari might perk me up a bit, but a bus? If I have to ride a bus in order to be an atheist, or if atheists have to ride buses, then Krishna, Krishna Hare Krishna, Hare, Hare, Krishna, Krishna...